Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
KRAX
I was literally being led by my dick. Elsie and Ukobach suggested we walk the streets in areas we thought Hecto might go, and we were walking around until I got a feeling about what direction we should head toward.
While I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, I could tell that Hecto was excited.
Elsie suggested we might try electric bikes, so we could search the streets faster, since I wouldn’t be hampered by the big metal boxes called cars.
I’d watched enough human television to know I wouldn’t enjoy being inside a car.
My mother and aunts loved human television.
They were especially fond of reality shows.
If there was a chance people would be forced into close proximity while everyone waited for them to fuck, then my family watched it religiously.
The human, Elsie, was looking at the instructions on the bike, and I stood back with Ukobach.
“You look good, Uko.” He truly did. All his imp parasites were glowing blue with happiness. They were just the remnants of souls that had hitched a ride on the inferior demon, but they acted kind of like a visual cue for his mood.
Ukobach grinned over at me. “Thanks, Krax. It’s all her. She’s amazing. She gives me love like it’s limitless. She’s funny and kind, and we fuck like she’s my one-way ticket to the pearly gates.” He laughed. “Though I’d happily give up any chance at Heaven for her.”
Oh, he was in love love, and I was raging with jealousy. “I’m happy for you.”
“I am too.”
Elsie swore, kicked the bike, and then moved down to the next one in the line.
“Short temper though,” he said as he laughed.
Looking back at me, he tilted his head to the side, his “meat suit” firmly in place so he blended in with the rest of the humans.
He looked odd to me without the huge, black horns on his head.
“How’d you let it get so bad that Hecto left? ”
I wouldn’t say Ukobach and I had been friends, but we’d been friendly, and Hecto was kind of a running joke down in Hell.
Shrugging, I crossed my arms over my chest. I was wearing a pair of Ukobach’s jeans and a loose cable-knit sweater to hide my tentacles, even though it was the middle of summer.
“You know what Hell is like. Hecto was having a good time, but the rest of me was…” Sad.
Desolate. Tired of being used like a novelty toy.
Lonely. “Not feeling it. It was just meant to be a little hiatus, and then we’d be back to our normal ways, but obviously that wasn’t fast enough for Hecto. ”
“How long was it?”
“A century… or two.”
Wincing, Uko patted me on the back. “Ah, I see. I get both points of view. After Elsie, the idea of going back to Hell and hooking up with the succubi makes me want to chop my dick off too. No offense.”
“I’m surprisingly unoffended that you don’t want to fuck my mom, Ukobach.”
Elsie, of course, chose that moment to reappear. “I can’t get the stupid app to work, so I guess we’re going on foot. Let’s try the nightclub district first. That’s where all the horny frat boys go.” She looked up at me and flushed.
She was very short, or maybe she just looked that way in comparison to Ukobach and me. I smiled down at her, and her blush darkened. “A horny frat boy could only wish it had half the raging hormones of Hecto.”
We walked for a while, weaving through the crowds that got progressively thicker as the night grew late. Scantily clad women and men waited out on the street to enter nightclubs filled with pulsing music and lust I could sense even out here.
I saw more than a few demons, though none I recognized. Both Uko and I stood a little closer to Elsie when we walked past them, even if the human in question was completely oblivious, chatting about Chicago and its history like she was a tour guide.
She held Ukobach’s hand, but she was walking close enough to me that her shoulder brushed my arm. I was living for those tiny touches, like taking sips of liquid life.
Looking up at me, she raised an eyebrow. “So what happens if Hecto finds someone? Does it ask for permission?”
I flushed red. “Well, kind of. It doesn’t have a mouth, so it can’t really ask for consent, but it always makes sure people are aware that it’s there and what its intentions are, and it can pick up if they are interested from their pheromones.
It might be detached from me, but it still possesses my morals, even if they are a little demonic.
The flow of pleasure is a two-way street. ”
Uko bent down lower. “Incubi can only feed on willing participants, otherwise sex is excruciatingly painful.”
“So if you and Hecto still share a connection, even though you aren’t, uh, attached, does that mean you’ll feel it if it… uh…”
“Fucks someone,” Uko helpfully supplied.
Satan’s hairy balls, this was embarrassing.
“Yes. I will feel its pleasure, its release, but, uh, without tasting that release myself, it can be a little uncomfortable. An aborted feeding, I guess is the best description. Normal incubi don’t have dicks that come off.
It’s never really a problem for them, but being half kraken makes things a little more complex. ”
I’d hoped she let it drop, but my luck wasn’t that good. “Uncomfortable how?”
“Like my body is trying to draw in the release, but there’s nothing there. I guess it would be comparable to that empty feeling in your stomach when you’re starving.”
“But a hundred times worse.” Ukobach frowned, a worried gleam in his eyes. He probably thought I would try to seduce his girlfriend. His next words, however, blew any ideas of jealousy out of the water. “Just so you know, I’m open to helping you out and to sharing, if that’s what Elsie wants.”
“What?” Elsie and I said at the same time.
He shrugged. “No pressure on you at all, sweet thing, but I wouldn’t want a friend to suffer, you know?
Besides, I’m not an avarice demon. You are too perfect to hoard just for myself.
” He paused, reading her face. “Unless that’s what you want.
If you’re a one-demon woman, then that demon is me, and I’ll rip the arms off anyone who tries to steal you from me.
” He got bigger, his horns flickering in and out, and his imps flashed on his skin, bright red like angry wounds.
I held out my hands. “Whoa there, you’d have to be an idiot not to see that Elsie loves you and only you, big guy. Take it down a notch.”
Elsie stepped forward and put her hand on his chest. “You’re riling up Bob.
” On the back of her hand was an imp just like Ukobach’s, and it was pulsing with a deep red light.
How did she manage to attract one of those?
They usually avoided mortals. Looking between me and Uko, she opened and closed her mouth several times, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words, then she turned and walked away, totally silent.
I looked at Uko. “Are you fucking insane?”
He slapped me on the back. “Maybe, but I know Elsie, and she’s been interested in you since you arrived, even with all the tentacles. If you need a hand, what are friends for?” He made a jerking motion with his hand and followed after his girlfriend like a faithful hellhound.
Insane.
I trailed behind them and hoped that Elsie would forget what Ukobach said. I liked her, and she treated me like a normal being and not like a freak. Even in Hell, I was an anomaly.
As if she also wanted to breach the awkwardness between us, she cleared her throat. “You sound a lot more like a modern human than Uko did when he first arrived. Have you spent more time in the mortal realm?”
I shook my head. “No, this is my first time, but my mother—she’s a succubus—and aunts enjoyed human television shows.
She paid one of the higher level demons to sneak her down copies of reality television programs and telenovelas.
They love their soap operas. I could do a dramatic pause and stare down the camera lens before I could talk. ”
Her soft chuckle made happiness swell in my chest, and my tentacles flailed a little where they were tucked tightly against me. “Well, now I need to see that. Just pretend I told you that your fiancée is really your half brother’s twin.”
I contorted my face into a serious frown, then I gasped and stared right down an imaginary camera.
“But you told me Storm wasn’t real. And Ashley, she’s…
she’s… pregnant!” I exaggerated my fake American accent and clutched my chest. “This is the part where I’d have a heart attack and fall into a coma. ”
Both Uko and Elsie were applauding, and we were getting several strange looks from the people lining up outside the clubs. The clientele was getting a little less polished though, and the people loitering on the sidewalk looked a little more predatory.
“Maybe we should head—” Pleasure pulsed along my body like a hot poker. Oh fuck. It was stirring deep in my groin, and I folded in half. “Fucking Hecto.”
Elsie rested her hand on my back, and I resisted the urge to grab her fingers and suck them into my mouth. “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking around for help.
“Hecto found a willing victim. Need to go somewhere…” I grunted as another wave of pleasure-pain dragged across my skin. “Quiet. Dark.”
Ukobach scooped me up, tossed me over his shoulder, and strode down a dark, dirty alley. That would do.